WHAT A HEEL: Cruel Justice
To avoid a backlog in his court calendar, Ocean County (NJ) Superior Court Judge Thomas O'Brien denied plaintiff Linda Pangione's request to delay trial of her suit for six months so she could go to FL to take care of her dying 89-year-old father, and dismissed her gender discrimination suit against a former employer with prejudice. Her lawyer appealed, and the case has been restored and remanded for a new trial date, reports New Jersey Law Journal:
"At the time of trial, this plaintiff was faced with a 'Sophie's Choice.' She could have abandoned her eighty-nine-year-old seriously ill father in Florida to pursue this litigation or she could have stayed to care for him and his affairs and see any chance of any adjudication of this litigation on the merits evaporate," said Appellate Division Judges Thomas Lyons and Alexander Waugh Jr. …
Lyons and Waugh said that while court rules, particularly R. 1:1-2, are meant to eliminate "unjustifiable expense and delay," the goal is not "the elimination of any and all delay but the elimination of 'unjustifiable' delay." …
"The principles of achieving a just determination and fairness in the administration of the Rules outweigh any short delay in this situation."
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